Renowned Caribbean historian, Barbados’ Dr. Hilary Beckles, arrives on the island on Friday and will be at the Sweet Cry Freedom Concert on Saturday May 5th to receive the prestigious Sweet Cry Freedom ’07 award. This year’s award is named for Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture and the award, a painting by renowned St. Lucia artist Arnold Toulon will be presented by the Right Honorable Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer.

Dr. Beckles’ honor recognizes his continued work as a leading Caribbean historian, principle as well as director of the Centre for Cricket Research at the University of the West Indies’ Cave Hill campus, professor of economic and social history, and author of some 10 books and editor of several others. In addition to his various other roles, Dr. Beckles is expected to play a leading part in the Reparations work that needs to be done throughout the African Diaspora with respect to the British Empire’s Atlantic Slave Trade.

Past recipients of the Sweet Cry Freedom award – re-named each year for a hero from the African Diaspora – have included music legends Stevie Wonder, Osibisa, David Rudder, and Third World; and achievers along the lines of former Windies captain Sir Vivian Richards, late Antiguan Prime Minister Sir V. C. Bird Sr., Jamaican hotelier Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart, and others.

More than just a social event, however, Sweet Cry Freedom has strived, from the very beginning, to shine a light on Caribbean and African-American achievement. It is for this reason that the awards have, over the years, been dedicated to the memory of true exemplars of freedom – people like Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr., Bob Marley, and, now, L’Ouverture, who helped secure Haiti’s place in history as the first liberated African nation in the western hemisphere. Sweet Cry Freedom’s return and the dedication of the 2007 award to the memory of this leader of the Haitian revolutionary (1791 – 1804), a pivotal point in the liberation of all Africans, is particularly significant in light of that other great anniversary of 2007 – the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade.